Fall Foliage in Vermont...Enjoy!

The first were taken on a drive on Poker Hill Road in Underhill--the next town north of Jericho. The last three pics J took on a hike on a hike up Hunger Mountain near Montpelier! Nice. Enjoy!

Catching Up on Stash Posting...

Okay, I'm guilty. I've been neglecting my blog lately! About a month ago I went to the Vt. Sheep and Wool Festival. I got some great stash (in the form of roving), and I meant to post the pics here before I forgot the sources of ones without id tags/business cards. But, then I was caught up in a cleaning frenzy for Kenny's visit--my knit friend from Houston, and another week passed by.

Then he was here--and we spent a week leaf peeping, visiting yarn shops (three) and now I have a ton more of yarn and roving stash--thanks to Kenny's generosity. I'll post some of it here and try to get caught up.

Click on pics to enlarge...

From the Sheep and Wool Festival:
The trio in the top picture: top left--Merino/Bamboo, 8 oz. To spin and dye (and sell as handspun). Top right--Corriedale (to spin and sell some); bottom--Merino/Tussah silk. To spin and maybe sell some.

Colorful balls of "Walk in the Woods" by my friends at Mountain Fiber Folk Co-op in Montgomery Center. It's a blend of mohair, alpaca and fine wool. I've spun up a couple samples of lace and sock weight. Yummy. I've also spun up 3 oz of heavier worsted weight. Pics later.

Shetland/Alpaca blend. Can't remember the farm. I'll update later. Very silky, super soft. Spun up a little sample--will make wonderful lace garment.

Fourth picture: top is some mystery thing I can't identify. Bottom of the pic is Llama down from West Mountain Farm in Stamford, Vermont.

Very soft. Silky. Divine. Most llama is sold with the down and rough, longer hair mixed in; in this format it's just okay. But, Gayle from West Mountain told me that this new process is capable of separating the two, and the result is incredible. Like cashmere, but stronger. Ohh Laa Laa!

Fifth picture, 8 oz of BFL (acronym for Blue-faced Leicester, a soft, but strong sheep wool, suitable for sock yarn and wonderful for dyeing). I plan on spinning and dyeing some of this and maybe keeping a bit for myself.

Bottom pic: top two balls are of angora bunny, kid mohair and lambswool--this is from the Mt. Fiber Folk Co-op.

It's really soft. But, when I spun it up, the angora (which is 50% of the total), was too dominant and clumped up--possibly because the three fibers are different and carded differently. I e-mailed Carol (it's her roving) and suggested lowering the percentage of angora to about 24-30%.

Angora rabbit is about 8-10 times warmer than wool. Like alpaca and llama, a good percentage is about 30% in the blend, which lends greater warmth to the yarn, but won't add so much weight to it. (I picked up 4oz of a 33/29/37 blend of angora/kid mohair/lambswool on our leaf peeping trip. This spun up perfectly.)

The two darker balls on the bottom of the pic are Jacob's Wool. This is a natural 3-color fleece, and if you can get it carded with all three colors in parallel stripes in the roving it's really cool! This roving had dark and light grey, which is pretty, and it has great strength but a lot of natural loft/air in-between the fibers, kind of elastic. Will make nice socks.

So, there you go! Fiber stash from the Vt. Sheep and Wool 2008. Next post will update you on the roving and mostly yarn stash I picked up during Kenny's visit to Vermont.

Take care, and happy knitting and spinning!

Chris

September Update...

Wow! I haven't blogged in ages! Kenny, my knitting friend from Houston, is here in Vermont for a week's vacation from the hurricane after-effects in Houston. He was without power and water for 9 days, and just had the power restored the day before he flew to Vermont. Luckily, he has a kind friend in Houston (with power) who let him stay with him for a number of days.

So, we've been off leaf peeping, visiting yarn shops, seeing the sights, eating great food and just hanging and relaxing. We visited the Mountain Fiber Folk Coop in Montgomery Center, Vermont. (First three pics at right.) I met Sabra (pictured with me), and Carol at the Vermont Sheep & Wool Festival about 3 weeks ago and told them we'd make the trek up to MC to see them. We had a blast! Nice stuff, nice people.

We had a lovely trip to Craftsbury Common, which is one of the most beautiful towns in Vermont, and saw lots of wonderful foliage, and some sheep right next to the road (dirt road)! I think it was the Bonnie View Farm. I'll have to goggle it and update here.

Other pics of foliage I think were on the way to Montgomery Center.

I just wanted to get a quick post off to update ya'll. I had lots to blog about after: visit to the Vermont Sheep & Wool, the stash I got there, spinning updates, and knitting updates. But, that's all for now!

Thanks for visiting my blog.

-Vtknitboy (chris)

Stash for sale!

Hello my friends all over the U.S. and elsewhere! I will be selling handspun yarn soon, but am going to start off by getting rid of some of my huge stash of purchased yarn! I will be adding other things to my Esty site (vtknitboy), which is not up quite yet, and am opening up a Paypal account, which should be operating in 3-5 days. If you want to purchase any of this-at this point I'd take a check (and send out the yarn once the check clears).

Note to Vermont knitters on Ravelry's Vermont Knitters group: you have first dibs! If you want any and are going to the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday, September 6th, I'll bring it and you'll save on shipping! Shipping is $4.50 for up to a pound. I'll let you know what it is for a skein or two, although I'd prefer to sell each color as a group. I'll sell the entire lot for $85! That's 2,165+ yards!

First batch up is Vermont wool, and Vermont wool/mohair blend. This yarn was spun by Green Mountain Spinnery about 8 years ago, but has been stored safely with no moths or yarn deterioration. I just washed all the skeins, and have re-skeined them. The yarn is a singles yarn. Some of it is slightly thick and thin, but the majority of it (90%+) is worsted weight to maybe slightly heavier worsted weight.

All this wool is from a woman who lives in Morrisville, Vermont, from her sheep and mohair goats.

White Vermont wool: 12 oz approx 660 yards $30This yarn is very soft, light and lofty, some thick and thin. Will dye easily, and probably felt well too! Great for socks, hats, mittens.

Grey Vermont wool with about 15% mohair: 16 oz. approx 890 yards $40 (PLUS 170+ yards skein that is slightly bulkier)
I made a sweater out of some of this yarn 8 years ago, and it's warm, soft, and a little fuzzy from the mohair. One of my "comfy" sweaters!

Red: Grey Vermont wool with 15% mohair, overdyed with red: 6.65 oz approx 365 yards $16.

Enough for a pair of socks, or maybe a hat and small mittens? Or buy it and add as an accent yarn with the grey.

Green: the same white yarn dyed in a pale, lovely green. 4.6 oz approx 250 yards, $10. Soft and light! Nice for socks.

Thanks for checking out this stuff. I'll have more up later. Email me or comment here with any questions.

Have a great day!

Spinning for Socks

In the past week I've been spinning a number of samples for socks. My goal is to get the sock yarn in the range of 6-8 stitches per inch. Following are some of the samples and some notes on the various fibers plied together in the yarn. I will be knitting them up over the next couple of days.

I spun up a couple ounces of white Shetland top I got at Paradise Fibers. This is fabulous top! It glides super, and drafts wonderfully--soft yet strong. Not hairy like some Shetlands, but also not downy. I then spun up smaller samples of various fiber.

Click on all pics to enlarge them...Sorry that some of them are a bit blurry!

Sample number one: The first is the blue-turquoise-green-purple roving of fine Merino. I got this at the Mens' Spring Knitting Retreat in Easton that I went to in May.

This roving was a bit compacted and I spent a lot of time attenuating the fiber so that it would draft easier. I first broke the roving into strips lengthwise, then attenuated them. I really love the colors, although they don't show up very well against the white Shetland. (I did another sample with this and dark wool with mohair, where the colors stand out much better.)

Sample number two was plied with some of the light gray alpaca I also got at the Spring Retreat, this was from the Alpacas of Easton I blogged about it May. This alpaca is super silky, and yields a thin yarn that is easy to draft. This plied up into a nice soft yarn.

Sample three I plied with some dark brown llama I got from our friends Chris & Leigh at Mountainshadow Farm. It has a different texture than alpaca--I describe it as more like hair--but it is as warm as alpaca; about 8 times warmer than wool. It makes nice sock yarn!

I did another sock yarn out of some black Shetland I bought years ago from Maple Ridge Shetland Farm in Randolph, Vermont years ago. My friend Joanne at Pine Ledge Studio in Fairfax, Vermont hand carded it for me, along with some gray, off white, and fawnish color. I plied this with some of the dark brown llama from Mountainshadow Farm. This is a bit more rugged than alpaca yarn--I overplied it on purpose to yield a nicely balanced, but firm sock yarn. This is the heaviest weight of all the yarns I did for this study.

I have another batch of samples drying, but I just did little bits. I'll post later about them.

Oh! I did have some fun with cashmere! Here are pics of the 100% cashmere yarn, and one small ball of cashmere plied with the Shetland. It's the small white ball of yarn in the bottom left of the picture--below the dark alpaca/llama yarn. Note that I overplied the cashmere on purpose. Down fibers like this and others tend to relax drastically after washing. In this case it was overplied, but relaxed into a just barely balanced yarn!

Some of the things to think about when spinning fibers that you are going to ply together are: fiber length, twist, and compatibility. The various fibers should be similar in length as possible. The longer the fiber, the less twist to get the yarn you want. I mean this in general. There are always variants and different ways to achieve different results. So, one example of not too compatible fibers would be cashmere and Lincoln wool. Cashmere is very short, about .5-1.75" and Lincoln wool averages about 7 inches! The problem that arises when plying these together is that there needs to be an incredible amount of twist in the Lincoln to come close to the twist in the cashmere. Thus, the Lincoln would be almost entirely unspun when plied with the cashmere. Okay, so these are kind of at both ends of the spectrum. But hopefully you see the point.

So, for the samples:
In sample number one, I could create a better yarn by spinning the Shetland thinner and with more twist. The colorful merino is a much finer fiber, and spun up thinner naturally. It had more twist in my sample, so the Shetland in between the twist bumps is looser.

In sample two: it worked out well. The alpaca and the Shetland were similar.

In sample three: it worked out well. The alpaca and the llama are similar.

It didn't work out so well having the cashmere plied with the Shetland. The Shetland is very loose--and in between the bumps in the twist of cashmere, it's pretty loose. I could overcompensate for this by spinning the Shetland very thin and tight, because the cashmere must be spun thin and with lots of twist to yield a nice yarn. I could spin it with less twist, but I think that it would shed and or pill a lot due to the ends being loose. Although, the yarn is super soft, it's not the best fit.

As far as compatibility, plying cashmere with any of the above isn't the best use of the fiber. It's expensive, and has a short length, so would best be matched up with another short fiber. In this case it would be better to blend cashmere with another base fiber, therefore lending softness to the final product.

Alpaca and most wools are pretty compatible in fiber length, so I think any of these will be good sock yarns. Plus, alpaca lends a great warmth factor to the yarn.

So, I try to match fiber as closely as possible in similar lengths and twist required for a good yarn, and that's why sampling is so much fun! I get to see what goes well with what.

Someone asked me if it was possible to ply from a single. Yes! I use this technique frequently when I want to spin up small amounts fiber. It's really easy. Just spin whatever you want onto one bobbin. Then, using a ballwinder, wind up into a ball. Have your wheel all ready to ply, and carefully take the ball of yarn off the ballwinder. Keep a couple of fingers inside the hole of the ball! Now, gather up the inner and outer ends of the ball, and keep two or three fingers inside the ball of yarn--creating enough tension between your fingers to keep the ball stable, but not so tight that you can't get the single yarn to unwind.

Tie the two ends up to the leader from your bobbin, and ply! There you go. When the ball starts getting loose and starts to collapse, insert another finger into the ball. Keep tension even on the yarn between the ball and the bobbin.

That's all for now!

Spinning Updates...the quest for lace continues!

So, I've been spinning up a storm lately! Lots of alpaca, Merino, Cormo, Shetland, and alpaca/Merino blends, and today I started on some cashmere. My next post will be about the joy of spinning cashmere!

According to standard WPI (wraps per inch) charts, I'm spinning lace and fingering weight yarn, with some sport weight. One of my goals is to get about 800 yards of lace for some future project (I joined a shawl KAL), so part of this spinning has been to play around with getting lace yarn and also sock yarn (which in some cases is interchangeable). I sampled a standard purchased sockweight yarn and I got 21 WPI with it, so I'm pretty close to it in my spinning.

One of the interesting things to note is the various characteristics of different fibers. Mainly, how much the yarn fluffs up after washing in the skein. I always wash my yarn after I've plied it--I skein it up and soak it in hot, soapy water, then a moderately hot rinse (soak), then spin it in the washing machine, then let it air dry. In almost all cases, the yarn fluffed up after washing and drying. Some fibers, like Cormo, for instance fluff up really well. Others, like Lincoln, not so much.

One of my projects was from my friend Maple at North Star Alpacas in Michigan. This was 4 oz of a blend from Indy, which is 74% alpaca, 1% mohair, and 25% Merino, I think. I have two skeins total of 475 yards/4.9 oz/1550 ypp (yards per pound) at 24 WPI. I see this as fabulous sock yarn! With alpaca being roughly 8 times warmer than wool, this blend will make nice, lightweight socks. All in white! I spin the singles with a modified supported longdraw, which incorporates a lot of air into them, and get the firmness and strength via plying. (Aside: I think it's funny when people refer to a single as a "one-ply". Doesn't it take two to ply?!) Yes, those are Tigger's feet in the picture! He likes to "help" spinning, knitting, and picturing.

Another white project! lol. I have bags of white alpaca and brown llama from our friends Chris and Leigh from a couple of years ago, and since I did a major reorganizing of the contents of the fiber room this week, I decided it was time to start using up what I have. I ended up with 233 yards/2.8 oz/1330 ypp at 20 WPI. Really great for more socks!

On to the fiber with some color! lol. I have a couple of Shetland fleeces I bought years ago, and my friend Joanne carded it all for me. I have 4 different colors: a very creamy off-white, a light grey, this one (light grayish brown), and a dark brown. Click here for Shetland color chart.

I have 11 oz of this color, and spun up a small sample of it. I think it would fall under light grayish brown. The fiber has a long staple, is hairy, like mohair, and stretches easily, gliding for a good long draw. Unfortunately, because it's so springy and hairy, I was getting lots of neps in it-- the hair curls up and snags, kind of like a pill on a sweater but it's tangled up in what I'm spinning. Also, little bits of more downy stuff would just come off, so I needed to be fastidious and pick them out. The sample came out about 19 WPI.

The black in picture on the left is a lambswool I was also sampling to see how it would make as lace yarn. It's soft and springy, and a little hairy. I might have problems knitting with it, especially at night, as I won't see the stitches very well. But it would make a nice lace shawl. The knit swatch was made from the first Shetland lace attempt (19 WPI), which is at the bottom of the swatch, and the black lambswool (18 WPI) at the top of the swatch.

I wasn't happy with the diameter of the first Shetland lace attempt, so i did another couple of 1/2 bobbins, and really tried to go for a super thin single. I plied it and washed it, and the lace is pretty nice. This skein (both pics are the same one) weighs 1.5 oz, there are 210 yards, and came out to 23 WPI, so this was my best attempt at lace! It comes out to about 2240 ypp, so much closer to the 2600 ypp standard lace weight.

One note about preparing fibers for lace spinning: It is really important to have very well prepared fiber. The thinner the roving, the better chance of achieving thinner singles. In all cases I attenuated the roving by splitting it into thinner strips lengthwise, then attenuated each strip before spinning it. In the case of the Shetland, it was carded into shorter batts (a square, versus a roving, which is a continuous "rope") and I broke it into short sections then attenuated them. The Shetland also had a habit of nepping, so I had to very lightly attenuate it, but ended up leaving it thicker than other fiber. This reduced the neps and yielded a better single.

There are a couple things here: spinning fiber finely, and spinning fine fiber (also finely). It is possible to spin average wool and other fibers thinly, but the thinner the fiber diameter (Merino being the finest wool), technically one should be able to achieve a much thinner yarn the finer the fiber...

There are other ways to spin fiber fine. One way is to spin from the individual lock, which has been washed, dried, and is then flicked with a little brush which opens up the fiber into a fan-shaped lock. One spins off the corner, and it is easy to spin a super thin single. Best info on this is Margaret Stove's book: "Handspinning, Dyeing & Working with Merino & Superfine Wools". She signed my book in a workshop I took with her in February 1999!

Enjoy!